A lot is being said today about my Grandmother, Mary Velma Williams.  I asked myself, “What insight can I share from a grandchild’s point of view?”  I’ll start with a story.

I remember the summer of 1979.  I was just 9 years old.  My brother and I were playing at her house.  It was the late afternoon and she was doing here daily house cleaning.  We were running around playing superheroes. Our playtime boiled down to me and my younger brother Jeremy finding inanimate objects and claiming they gave us power.  We would place our hands on tables, chairs, or anything else we could get our hands on and make a high pitch noise in order to demonstrate it was transmitting some sort of super power into our bodies.  It was a fun morning to play superhero.

We gathered this imaginary power throughout the house and apparently Grandma had had enough.  Without breaking her stride in cleaning she stated to us in her southern accent, “you boys better quit getting all this power from my stuff and start getting real power from this.”  Just then she pointed to the huge Family Bible that sat on her coffee table.  I would love to say we took her advice immediately but we had another thought.  I quickly ran over to the large Bible and placed my hand on it and made my high pitch noise to indicate I was getting power from that Bible.  Grandma was not amused and shooed us out of the house and scolded us for not taking her seriously.  I can’t help but to think she had a chuckle to herself after we were gone.

But on a serious note it was Grandma Williams who made the legit challenge to me and her Grandchildren to get “real” power from reading the Word of God and living a life of total surrender to God.  She lived her life as a wonderful example of faith and total trust in God.  She lived in the power that only comes from God Himself.

This is what I remember about my grandmother…..  Jesus was never far from her thoughts.  But being around her, she never made you feel like this way of thinking was foolish or forced.  I never once felt as if she was pushing her way of thinking on me.  In fact, she inspired me to think this way for myself.  Keeping Jesus in the forefront of my mind was appealing to me because I saw how happy and powerful she seemed to be.  She lived this by example and never shoved it down my throat.  She simply approached me as here grandchild and assumed I would feel the same way about Jesus as she did.  As a result I did feel the same way.  In fact I still do.

This is the legacy she leaves, a bright legacy of spreading and living out Christ-likeness here on earth. How did she do it?  Paul said in 2 Cor. 4:16 “Thou our outer self is heading for decay our inner self is being renewed daily”.  You see her life was a display of this Biblical truth.  It was dedicated to showing others the love of Christ.  Her body got weak as all of ours do but here light got stronger and stronger.

My last conversation with her she told me she was fine with whatever God had in store for her life and if she remained here on earth she felt there would be a ministry work for here to continue being done.  That work was to minster to others by showing them the powerful life that only comes through Jesus.  Even in here weakened state she was willing and able to minster to others.

She is now gone but she has left behind a bright and burning light.  That light is her legacy.  Now we bask in the afterglow of her legacy and we will continue to do so for generations to come.